That article is spot on about HIMYM too. It was a finale clearly written years earlier that didn’t mesh with where the show went in the interval.

Yep. That ending might have worked if the show ended a few years earlier, but it didn’t work at all after all those seasons. It was kind of amazing to see the creators so hell bent on not changing their original vision despite the story really telling them to change course. But that entire final season was ill advised.

As a fan of HIMYM throughout its run, its finale was hugely satisfying. This was a show that always had everything figured out. It had its conclusion figured out. It dissatisfied people who weren’t paying attention, or had no idea what the show actually was.

I disagree. They spent a lot of time on the Barney/Robin relationship. They spend a whole damn season at their wedding. And then they tear it all down in about 10 minutes to force and ending that I don’t think worked for the show or characters anymore. But that’s just me.

That’s standard sitcom storytelling. The length of time Ross and Rachel spent apart in Friends, how do you justify that ending? Robin and Barney needed that relationship for personal growth. Robin’s whole reason for breaking up with Ted originally was that she wasn’t ready for commitment. Barney’s was because he never let anyone in. Ironically Robin never wanted kids, but that’s what Barney wanted. And everyone gets what they want in the end. This was a show about how messy adult life is, especially in the modern era. And it followed that concept to the very end.

No, the show thinks it’s doing a clever swerve at the end, by going “but wait, didn’t you realise this was all about Ted being in love with Robin, not really how he met his dead wife” which is completely undermined by the show having extensively showed that Ted and Robin don’t work as a couple. If they gone with that at the end of season 3 or 4 or even 5, it could have passed. But by season 9, Ted and Robin was a dead horse the show kept flogging, presumably because they knew they had to work up to it in the finale, and they still didn’t sell it. I’m half-convinced they only stuck with it because they’d pre-recorded the kids’ bits in season 2 and couldn’t remount them.

I think the show will survive that. He’s perfectly decent in the role and the past two series has managed to make Harris and Rory credible co-presenters. As long as his replacement is good and can balance out Harris’ road-rage and Rory’s occasional over-enthusiasm, it’ll do ok.

They did explain why it didn’t work, and…again, that’s something they both worked on separately. Ted finally found someone who wanted him for who he was. The whole point of the series was to explain what it means to always be on the search for a perfect mate. It makes you crazy. And even when you find them, fate still has its own ideas. The fact that Robin was there all along, it was never normal. Either it was just an excuse to have another member of the cast, or there was always a part of her that understood what she didn’t want to admit, that Ted really did fill a void in her life. But we spend an inordinate amount of our time trying to deny stuff like this, because we think our life has told us one thing and that we should believe that, but sometimes we allow ourselves to finally believe something else.

Following the "Roseanne" cancellation, people took to social media with ideas of shows ABC could bring back to replace the revival. The ideas ranged from shows like "Agent Carter" to the recently cancelled "Designated Survivor."